


the second painting

by pandabrite



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, One Shot, and i was very emotionally sort of not in a great place writing this, but i hope it reads okay, lucretia deserves to be happy guys, she deserves the world and i love her, thanks for stickin' with me y'all, this is short
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-11
Updated: 2017-11-11
Packaged: 2019-01-31 19:45:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 925
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12689007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pandabrite/pseuds/pandabrite
Summary: lucretia takes some time to paint a new portrait of all of the people she now calls her family.





	the second painting

**Author's Note:**

> we short today y'all. day 10 of taz nanowrimo and i am suffering. this is the shortest thing i've written but it was like pulling splinters to get this out. the prompt was to describe a photograph in excruciating detail. there's some vagued over taako forgiveness that i have planned out but will write some other time. anyway, thanks for stickin' with me~ the prompt list is from tumblr user lucretia-the-director.

Even after all of these years, Lucretia still had the original portrait she had painted of her family on their treacherous century long mission . It hung in her office at the Bureau of Benevolence. It was nice-- now, now it no longer had to be disguised. It was no longer hidden by the stark reminder of her own failures. Ghostly fragments of her own loss, of her own loneliness, were gone now. They were faded away and they would never return. 

It had been six years.

Six long years after the day of Story and Song. Six long years before she had her family back completely. 

_Taako had finally forgiven her._

The last link to the chain of her heart had been repaired… but that-- that was a story for another time… 

It didn’t matter now.

Now… now she had them all. Lucretia felt inspiration in her heart, which sang the joys of having all of her family back with her once more. 

She had all of their beaming faces spread on a canvas before her-- and, granted, her family had grown quite a bit over the years, so it had to be a much larger canvas than the first she’d used during the beginning of their adventure so many years ago. 

She held a brush aloft between her fingers, soft music played in the background from a record player… she had a cup of orange blossom tea steeping on a small table by her canvas. Sunlight dappled in the windows of her office, a radiant and warm glow cast upon the fresh, wet paint of the newest edition to her artwork. 

A pair of broadly smiling figures-- one, a dark haired, dark skinned and devastatingly handsome man, swathed in a dark cloak who had his arm curled around the waist of a bright eyed, tan skinned, beautiful elf… _Her Taako._ Taako and his husband, Kravitz, who she now had the pleasure to get to truly get to know. A patient, soft hearted and rather silly gentleman who she was truly, truly glad to have found Taako. He… he deserved that. Someone to understand him. Someone to love him-- because she stood by what she thought before, that Taako deserved to be loved by everyone.

Lucretia smiled, and though it was touched with regret, it was… it was softer, happier now than it had been in years.

Because everyone _did_ love Taako. And… that was just how it was supposed to be.

After finishing her work, Lucretia leaned back and admired it… it was the final touch to a painting she’d been working on for months… And now, now she could finally say it was perfect.

A painting of all of the friends she now had. Of the family she’d began with, and all of the family that had grown through the insurmountable hardships she had faced. Though her loneliness and her isolation had blossomed a group of people of whom she loved with every ounce of love she had in her heart.

There were the original members, of course-- Lup, Barry, Taako, Magnus, Merle, and Davenport. 

Merle now was joined by his two lovely, albeit rowdy, children, Mavis and Mookie…

Lup and Barry were much the same as they had been in their original portrayal, forever granted youth through their new status as reapers though now they held hands…

Magnus was there, much older now, and also much wiser… a calm and wise expression lay behind the cheesy grin he bore, and with him, hanging from his arms, bright pink tongue lolling from his mouth was the dog he had affectionately dubbed Johann, and oh, how her heart ached, just a touch, at the thought… 

Davenport stood nearest the front, next to Merle, and with a fist on top of Mookie’s head in a mock noogie-- and he wore an emblazoned Captain’s uniform for the ship he now used to sail and explore the seas of their new homeland…

And further than that… there were also several new additions-- There was an orc woman, holding aloft upon her shoulders a small dragonborn woman, who was cheesing it in a dramatic pose, draped across her wife’s back-- Carey and Killian, of course. 

With them stood Avi, who held two finger guns aloft, on one knee, looking dramatic but serious all at the same time, a smile carved into a tired but a handsome face.

Bright eyed and beaming, in the very center of the picture in the front, stood a teen with curly hair a bag full of professor’s books and a wizard’s wand proudly across his chest-- Sweet, sweet Angus McDonald, who looked so confident and triumphant and sharp… 

And in the center of them all… as she had before, many years ago, stood Lucretia. And while she was weathered, and while she was not the young twenty-year-old she had been in the original painting, she was smiling with such a radiant grace that looking at it, even herself, made her chest swell. And it was truly, truly how she felt.

Her heart was full for the first time in years. She felt such happiness and an earnest love for her life, and for the people she had been blessed to receive. For those lights that touched her soul, that guided her out of the darkest moments of her life. She felt light and alive and joyful… 

And she was surrounded by the brightest family she could ever have hoped for…

And she could now say, truly, that she was whole. 

She was happy.


End file.
